Spring Park

Description

Healing Waters

The earliest record of the property shows that Samuel Williamson owned the 400 acre tract in 1796. His son, Dabney, who inherited the property, owned a slave by the name of Lewis who participated in Gabriel’s Rebellion. Lewis attempted to persuade comrades to free those arrested shortly after the rebellion unraveled. He was tried and deported.

The first notation of the site being a mineral spring appears on a map in 1810. Later it is referred to as a sulphur spring. The Bloomingdale Land Company most likely had the granite spring house constructed sometime in the 1890s when they had many land improvements made. In 1901, a real estate advertisement appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch showing the park and spring referred to as Spring Park adjacent to a proposed subdivision.

By 1933, it appears that the spring was no longer in use. An affidavit presented to the County Board of Supervisors showed “the neither the county nor the public has used the spring or park for many years, or at least twenty years, and the spring no longer exists.”